


Negative Space

by DracoMaleficium



Series: Elseworlds [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Normal Life, And a Lot of Other Issues Too, Comic Book Writers AU, Enemy Lovers, Hate Sex, M/M, San Diego Comic-Con, Secret Relationship, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, anger issues, intimacy issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-09-17 22:44:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9349553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DracoMaleficium/pseuds/DracoMaleficium
Summary: Bruce Wayne and Jack Napier, two renowned, competing comic book writers, have a comfortable routine going. They publish their books, they criticize each other's work on all platforms available, they fight... and something else besides, too.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is something I've sitting on for quite a while now, and I decided to share hoping that the pressure of having the first part out there will help motivate me to finish it up. It's not gonna be a long story - I'm thinking 3 chapters max, or maybe even just 2, so don't worry, it won't compete for my attention with HWA much. It's more like a stress relief side project, something lighter for me to tinker with when I'm too overwhelmed with the angst... although when I say "lighter" I only mean relatively, because these two idiots have plenty of issues to go around even in a "normal people" AU. So just, heed the tags and the warnings - there'll be more added with the next part whenever I get around to finishing it up.
> 
> The fic was inspired by the very real and rather epic conflict between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison - look it up, it's incredible. Many thanks to everyone who brainstormed the idea with me or listened to me rant about it, it's all very appreciated <3
> 
> Enjoy and please let me know what you think!

If any enterprising journalist over at, let’s say, Buzzfeed, ever felt the need to make a listicle called _All The Things Bruce Wayne Hates, in Alphabetical Order (The Contents May Shock You!)_ — on the slim offchance that the general public would ever care about what a billionaire heir turned comic book writer thinks — the letter C would definitely stand for “conventions.”

Or crowds. But since one is so closely tied to the other, after a good few years in the business the difference between the two has gotten all blurry and confused to the point where they’ve become synonymous. At least for someone like Bruce, who cherishes his weird hermit reputation and the privilege of working from his lakeside cabin upstate, a good deal away from all sorts of C’s.

Unfortunately for him, Bruce’s employer doesn’t care about Bruce’s opinions on conventions. Or on crowds. Or on much of anything, really, as long as he does as he’s told and keeps his deadlines. Even less fortunately, doing as he’s told involves fulfilling the obligations of his contract — another strong contender for the C spot on the list — according to which Bruce has to attend at least two big conventions a year to do his part promoting the publisher. Personally Bruce never could understand why the brass seem so weirdly hung up on this particular stipulation, but they are, and at this stage in his career Bruce is resigned to his fate. He’s learned how to pick his battles, and doing an early morning SDCC panel about the influence of comic books on young audiences and mentoring young comic creators, with a couple hours of signing on the side, isn’t actually the worst way he could be spending his mornings.

He can think of at least… three worse things. Or four.

The trek through the sweaty, writhing, underslept, malnourished and hyperexcitable convention floor, though, is something he can definitely do without, and he has to keep reminding himself of the worse alternatives as he navigates the crowds and fends off eager autograph seekers hoping to skip the signing line.

When he finally, _finally_ reaches the blessed oasis of the green room and spots a table full of familiar, friendly faces — each caught at a different stage of caffeinated stupor — he heads right over and collapses onto the spare plastic chair with more enthusiasm than grace.

“You survived,” Dick observes, toasting Bruce with his latte.

“Barely.” Bruce runs a hand through his hair, then immediately hears an echo of Alfred’s voice gently chastising him for it and tries to smooth it back to a semblance of order. He looks at the young faces of his team. “How are you all up so early?”

“ _Someone_ really wanted to check out the merch booths before the crowds get bad,” Barbara complains, glaring daggers at a vaguely apologetic Tim. “Worse,” she corrects herself. “I actually think some of these people slept here.”

“They did,” Tim confirms with all the certainty of someone who’s attended his fair share of cons before ever having his name listed in the credits of a book.

“That’s fine. I just wish they remembered to pack a deodorant.”

“At Comic Con?” Dick taunts her, making a valiant attempt to look energized despite the dark circles under his eyes. They’re a matching set on that front, Bruce observes, and hopes that his own aren’t too prominent. They’re all night people, he and his little team, which is not insignificant when it comes to why they’ve all clicked together so well. Trading excited phone calls about plot breakthroughs or characterization insights at 3am is all part of the creative process for them and Bruce doubts a morning person would survive a week of that regime, let alone a good five years.

He looks around.

“Not like Clark to cut it this close to the panel,” he observes.

The kids look at one another. Their faces settle into something that immediately puts Bruce on the alert.

“What?” he asks.

“He’s not coming,” Tim explains. “Vicky said he canceled late last night. She’s been trying to get someone to replace him all morning.”

Well, damn. “Does anyone know what happened?”

“No, just that it was very sudden. You should maybe text him, see if he’s all right,” Dick suggests.

Bruce nods and goes for his phone. He shoots off a quick text to Clark, mumbling, “I hope Vicky finds someone sensible…”

“She said she was going to look for Selina Kyle,” Barbara says.

“That won’t work,” Dick murmurs, consulting his con booklet. “Selina’s on a parallel panel. Women of Color in Comics.”

“Wait, that’s at 9? I thought it was gonna be at noon.” Barbara quickly checks her own program and curses under her breath. “Shit, you’re right. I really wanted to go to that one. You boys won’t mind if I don’t cheer on you this one time, will you?”

“Go ahead,” Bruce tells her easily. “Dick and I will be fine.”

“It sucks though, Selina would be perfect for this panel. Her last workshop went so well.”

“Yeah, well, let’s hope Vicky manages to grab some sort of replacement before —”

The door to the green room bangs open, whooshing in the noise of the convention floor and the sound of two people laughing.

Bruce freezes in his chair.

Oh no.

“Tell me that’s not who I think it is,” he whispers, refusing to glance over his shoulder to check even though he doesn’t have to; for one thing, he’d recognize that laugh anywhere, and besides, the faces of the kids around him are frozen in expressions that range from fear to shock to disgust, which tells him all he needs to know.

“Sorry, Bruce,” Dick whispers, “it’s him all right. Quinzel and Isley are with him, and, um. So’s Vicky.”

Shit shit _shit_. Vicky wouldn’t do that to him. She wouldn’t!

“Maybe it’s not what it looks like,” Tim tries, weakly.

“I’m surprised Pamela’s with them,” Barbara comments. “She’s never liked Napier.”

“Yeah, but she’s friends with Harley now, so…”

“Uh, heads up, Bruce, looks like he’s coming over.”

God no. Please, no. Not again. Not this time. Bruce promised himself he won’t let himself do… any of it, not anymore, and _dammit_!

But then out of the corner of his eye he spies a pair of gangly long legs clad in skinny purple jeans ingratiate themselves into his personal space, and an ass is plopping onto the table in the space between him and Dick, and Bruce smells citrusy perfume, and an all-too familiar voice calls happily, “Why, isn’t that Bruce Wayne!”

“Go away, Napier,” he grunts without looking up. His face is already heating up with the kind of tight tension he’s grown to call the Napier effect, and heat prickles at the base of his spine, and his mind suddenly decides that now would be a perfect time to flash him bits and snatches of memories from the last time he and Napier saw one another, and —

No. Not this time. He needs to _stop._

“I only wanted to say hello,” Napier complains. “I haven’t seen you since Chicago.”

“Why are you even up so early?” Bruce demands. Napier is even worse at mornings than he is, and that’s saying something. It’s partly why Bruce agreed to do a panel at 9am — he can usually count on the early panels to be a Napier-free zone.

“Vicky flashed the bat-signal and like a true hero, I responded.” There’s a finger poking into Bruce’s bicep. “Looks like you and I are gonna be on a panel together, baby.”

Oh God.

“Like hell we are,” Bruce snaps, finally looking into the face of the man who, on the list of all the things Bruce hates, occupies both the J and the N.

And as soon as he does, he knows it’s a mistake. It _has_ been a while since the last time they saw one another in the flesh. The sight of Jack Napier now — his ridiculous green hair carefully styled into a messy-on-purpose undercut, his eyes bright and heavily shaded, his toned shoulders and tattooed arms on display, a glaring yellow tank-top hanging loose to advertise his lean, wiry figure, sunglasses pulling the neckline into a plunging V…

Bruce’s throat goes dry. Heat churns insistently where it definitely shouldn’t, and he wants to punch Napier on principle, just to fuck up the perfect image in front of him.

It doesn’t help. He knows what Napier looks like with a black eye. It doesn’t help at all.

Napier’s mouth — painted an obnoxious deep red, because of course it is — stretches into a smirk that does nothing to ease the squeeze in Bruce’s abdomen. The guy stretches his arms on the table behind himself, showing himself off like the asshole he is, cooing, “You were saying?”

“Get your ass off the table,” Bruce grumbles, resisting the urge to stare at his cleavage. “We’re not doing a panel together.”

“Actually,” Vicky joins them, hovering behind an unimpressed Barbara and having the decency to look apologetic, “I just asked him to fill in for Kent. No one else was available, and well, I thought…”

“She thought that a different point of view might spice things up,” Napier offers, far too pleased with himself.

“Vicky, that’s ridiculous,” Bruce protests, pointedly ignoring the interruption. “The panel is supposed to be about young readers getting into comics. This guy,” he points at Napier with his thumb, “has absolutely nothing to contribute.”

“I resent that.” Napier slouches forward, still smirking. “I happen to write books the hip young crowd actually reads, which is more I can say for some of the people at this here table.”

Bruce shoots Vicky a look he hopes says, _See?_. She rolls her eyes.

“Look, all I want is a nice, semi-civilized panel where industry professionals discuss their opinions about the relationship between comics and youth. You both have insights that the fans want to listen to. You’re just gonna have to suck it up and act like adults for an hour, okay?” she says. “I’m confident that the two of you _can_ manage to not punch one another for a full hour if you really try. Come on. Be professional.”

“I’m professional,” Bruce protests.

Napier brakes into a chuckle. It’s an obnoxious chuckle, because Napier is an obnoxious person. He pulls himself up — thank God — and reaches for the pocket of his obnoxiously tight pants. He retrieves an obnoxious phone protected by an obnoxious sparkly-purple case, and starts to tap at it, obnoxiously.

Ignore, Bruce tells himself. Ignore him.

“What are you doing?” Bruce demands, not two seconds later.

“Hang on,” Napier shushes him, “give me a moment.” He continues scrolling.

Bruce wonders if he could get away with physically pushing the son of a bitch off the table and making it look like an accident.

Then Napier goes “A-ha!” — obnoxiously — and brandishes the phone in Bruce’s face so close the screen nearly flattens Bruce’s nose.

It’s a recording. It’s _the_ recording. Bruce recognizes it from the very first grainy, shaky, hand-held frame. He wants to shut his eyes against it immediately, but that’s probably just what Napier expects and Bruce will be damned before he gives him the satisfaction, so he makes himself sit still and watch as the person standing in line for one of Bruce’s signing events slowly inches forward. A two years younger and approximately twenty years more innocent version of Bruce sits at a table not too far from where the person recording stood in line, and — of course — then there’s Napier, tip-toeing in an obnoxiously theatrical manner toward Bruce from behind. Because he’s an evil, obnoxious jerk, and that’s what evil, obnoxious jerks like him do for attention.

Bruce knows exactly what’s about to happen. He’s seen the recording so many times he can time everything down to a second. And he counts in his mind as he watches recording-Napier lean in to whisper in recording-Bruce’s ear. And he watches himself leaping to his feet, grabbing Napier by the front of his rainbow The Beatles t-shirt, and punching him point-blank in the face.

The crowd in the line explodes into a rush of painfully staticy noise, too loud for the cameraphone’s fragile speakers. Napier cuts it short, taking the phone away and killing the video with a faux-angelic grin that looks — what else — obnoxious.

“Pure professionalism right there,” he crows. “Look at that mean right hook! Too bad the violence in your monthlies isn’t half as convincing.”

“That’s what you get for being an asshole,” Bruce snaps.

“You’d know all about my asshole, wouldn’t you, baby?” Napier grins, then turns to Vicky. “Still one of my fondest memories.”

Face flushing hot like he’s just stepped out of a sauna, Bruce looks away. He can believe that, especially with the knowledge of what happened when, later that night, Bruce was stupid enough to come to Napier’s hotel room to apologize.

“Jack,” Vicky sighs, helpfully distracting Bruce from that particular set of memories. “Give it a rest. You two can measure dicks later.”

Napier puts the phone away into his bag, making the extra effort to let his smile turn oily as it lingers on Bruce. “Indeed.” Letting Bruce stew, he turns the charm up to eleven when he grins back at Vicky.

“Just having some fun,” he twitters. He cranes his neck and calls out, “Ain’t that right, Harls?”

“I’m ignoring you,” Quinzel calls back from the corner where she and Isley have sequestered themselves. “I’m not affiliated with you when you’re being an idiot.”

“Alas, ye fair-weathered friends,” Napier laments. “And here I’ve taught you everything you know.”

Quinzel sticks her tongue out at him and Napier points at her with his thumb, making big eyes at Bruce. “See that? See this scandalous ingratitude?”

“Get off the goddamned table,” Bruce tells him, again.

Miraculously, Napier does. But not before putting his hand in Bruce’s hair and ruffling it, obnoxiously.

“Good to see you, Brucie,” he sings. “Looking forward to having a civilized discussion with you in a room full of fans!”

He ambles away and over to Harley and Pamela, his walk just short of a proper sashay, his intentions transparent. Bruce frankly refuses to play along and doesn’t let his eyes linger on the tight fit of his pants. He fixes a glare on Vicky instead, and tries to ignore how everyone else at the table is obviously trying to fight off a giggling fit. Fat load of help this lot turned out to be.

“I will behave if he does,” he states.

“Said a thirty-something-year-old man.” Vicky turns to Dick, somberly. “I trust _you_ can keep your boss in check,” she tells him. “I don’t want any punching. Or kicking, or biting, or anything even remotely… fisticuffy, got it?”

“That’s not fair,” Dick protests. “ _I_ never punched anyone, why do I gotta babysit?”

“Not like, anyone-anyone,” Barbara interjects. “Right? You must have punched _someone_ before?”

“Not the point, Barb.”

“I punched lots of people.”

“Barb.”

“There will be no punching,” Bruce asserts, raising his voice. “But he needs to act like a normal person. You gotta keep him in check, Vicky. There’ll be kids there.”

“I know that. I’ve moderated before, you know.” Vicky flicks her badge. “Just… keep the moral high ground, okay? Your hero always does. Be like Batman, Bruce.”

“Yeah, Bruce.” Tim agrees, giving in to the giggles. “Be the Bat! Be the hero Comic Con needs —”

“— but doesn’t deserve!” Barbara finishes, beaming.

Bruce glares around the table of amused faces. He’s surrounded by traitors. “I hate all of you,” he tells them.

Dick pats him on the shoulder, saying, “We love you too. But seriously, man, it’s gonna be okay. Just… don’t rise to his bait, and don’t go on a rant about how immoral his books are. How hard can it be?”

Bruce breathes out. Very hard, he knows from experience. There’s a reason he and Napier haven’t done any panels together in over three years. Last time he checked, the video of their last shared panel had over a hundred thousand hits.

He glances over his shoulder. Napier catches his gaze, and winks.

Bruce sighs, and murmurs, “This is going to be a disaster.”

 

***

 

Spoiler alert: he’s right.

“Look, no offense but you can’t hold the reader’s hand all the time! You gotta respect that they’re not idiot automatons. They can think for themselves. There’s nothing wrong with giving them a choice —”

“Your version of _choice_ is just filth and depravity 24/7!”

“So I enjoy the darker themes and experimentation, so what? Clearly there’s other people there who are into that so —”

“Darker themes? Experimentation? Just last week you released an issue where a fan favorite character gets decapitated after having sex with a man-eating monster! What sort of lesson is that?!”

“That’s the problem, _Bruce_ , it wasn’t supposed to be a lesson! If I wanted to preach morals I’d be teaching at Catholic schools, not writing comics. I’m not anyone’s parent, okay? That’s not what they pay me for. They pay me to tell the stories I wanna tell the way I wanna tell them, and yeah, a lot of it’s filth. Because I enjoy filth! I enjoy the unexpected, and I enjoy throwing my readers for a loop because it’s _fun_. Although it’s nice to see you’re still reading my work.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. The fan outrage was kind of impossible to miss. And even you can’t possibly be as thick as to believe that there’s no message in what you’re doing!”

“Oh, there is. Of course there is. It’s just not the kind of message you’re comfortable with so it’s gotta be bad, right? The fact that someone dares to use your precious medium in a manner you don’t approve of gets you soooooo worked up, doesn’t it? Well you know what, _maybe_ there’s value in confronting the readers with chaos and darkness every once in a while because newsflash, life is dark! Life can be a bloody, chaotic, inexplicable mess! Not everyone has the luxury of punching their villains to jail after every neatly-wrapped, squeaky clean story arc, and not everyone —”

“That’s the thing though, that’s what you don’t get! Stories are supposed to help us make sense of life, not just reflect it! They’re supposed to offer hope and make us feel we can do better, and that things can be better. That there’s something we _can_ control.”

“By dressing up in a bat suit, sure, I get ya.”

“That’s not the — ! God, look. Just because _you_ wouldn’t recognize responsibility if it hit you in the face doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t either. Those books are read by young people, and there’s all sorts of research confirming how easy it is to internalize negative lessons and prejudices, and so we have to be careful what we put in there unless —”

“You think my books teach negative prejudices? Seriously? I’m gay, Bruce, in case you haven’t noticed. I used to be dirt poor and I’ve gone through a list of shrinks a mile long and you could probably stock up a hospital with the amount of shit I’ve put in my body. I’m not exactly gonna run for a GOP seat anytime soon.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re not responsible for the political and moral implications of what you —”

“Hang on, does anyone have matches on them? I think my esteemed colleague is about to indulge in some merry book burning.”

“I’m not talking about censorship, I just mean —”

“Oh really? Because from where I’m standing it looks like you’d be out on the streets celebrating if they reintroduced the CCA.”

“Now you’re just being obtuse. Even you can’t deny that there’s a very real mission we have to young people, and we have to treat our influence seriously! How are we supposed to teach our readers about hope and perseverance if —”

“You want to teach those things. I don’t. I don’t get why this offends you so much.”

“It _doesn’t_ , I’m just saying, if you’re going to release works that are supposed to be for teenagers, like that series you did with Harley, then you have to —”

“Sanitize them? Pretend that things like sex and drugs and violence don’t exist until you turn 18? That nothing dark will touch you as long as you, what, wish upon a star? Your books are full of violence too, Wayne!”

“But I actually think about how I frame it and I always make sure that there’s punishment, and a satisfying ending that fulfills the contract I made with my readers, and that has some sort of valuable lesson —”

“Fine! Good! If you wanna talk down to young people like some sort of Victorian agony aunt be my guest, but don’t expect all the rest of us to do the same!”

“All I’m asking is some consideration —”

“No, you’re asking me to think like you!”

“Well, obviously that’s impossible while you take every bit of criticism is a personal attack!”

“Says the guy who threw a fit on twitter because I dared to spoof your darling hero —”

“You did that because you _wanted_ to set me off!”

“And you fell for it hook, line and sinker, honey! And you’re telling _me_ I can’t take criticism?!”

They stare each other down, breathing hard. The room buzzes with excited whispers, giggles, camera flashes. Dick and Barry, the other scheduled panelist, sit between Bruce and Napier with their faces in their hands. Vicky takes advantage of the brief pause to stand up and glare daggers at both of them; she’s been trying to get them to shut up for the last ten minutes.

She turns to the snickering crowd. “Well now.” She clears her throat. “Any questions?”

 

***

 

Bruce’s blood still runs far too hot and thick. He knocks back his third shot, hoping that three times will prove the charm and that maybe this one will finally take the edge off the indignant fire still burning up his cheeks.

It doesn’t.

“You make it way too easy for him,” Selina judges, letting the straw of her own tall frou-frou drink slip from her painted lips.

“What am I supposed to do?” Bruce barks. “Just let him spout his bullshit like I accept it? Just let it _slide_?”

Selina tips her head to the side. Her eyes twinkle. “Exactly.”

They’re green, like Napier’s. A little darker. Kinda like Napier’s get when Bruce grabs him by the neck and —

Bruce orders another shot.

“You weren’t there,” he tells her. “You didn’t hear —”

“Um, yeah I did. Harley showed me the video. It’s on youtube. Congrats, by the way, it’s gone viral.” She takes another sip. “Again.”

Bruce contemplates his glass. He wonders if he should order an entire bottle of Jack Daniels and be done with it.

“And besides,” Selina adds, “I didn’t need to watch it. Your fights are always the same. You both sound like a broken record.”

“That’s because he never learns.”

“And you do?”

“He brought up Owlman, Selina. I couldn’t just —”

“So he made a spoof of Batman that one time and people liked it. Big deal. You created a villain based on _him_. Wasn’t that revenge enough for you?”

Bruce grunts and looks away. Maybe it would have been revenge enough if only, in true fuck-his-life fashion, the Joker hadn’t gotten so damn _popular_. Bruce doesn’t get it, but somehow, the character that was supposed to be Bruce’s admittedly petty response to Owlman — a ruthless, clownish villain equipped with Napier’s curly green hair, pale skin and pointy figure, as well as his flamboyant sense of dress and enormous ego — exploded into a hit and far outraced the rest of his comic book villains in terms of fan following and demand. And the worst part is, Napier _loved_ it. Bruce saw him wear a Joker t-shirt in a video interview two months after the character’s big debut, playing up his delight with the whole situation to a typically obnoxious degree.

Bruce would have killed the bastard off a long time ago out of sheer spite if only his publishers let him, but they won’t. The Joker is far too marketable. And Napier will keep the gloating rights forever, damn his stupid pointy face.

The waiter brings him his drink just as his phone lights up with a new text message. Bruce sees the “J” name and morosely considers the benefits of throwing his phone out the window. The _gall_ —

He checks the message just in case, to be absolutely sure that it really is as obnoxious as he suspects.

 _Room 306_ , it declares, the characters practically screaming in his face.

Bruce slams the phone screen-down onto the table and downs his drink. He didn’t think his face could get any hotter.

“What was that?” Selina prods with marked interest.

“Nevermind,” Bruce murmurs, pointedly looking away from the phone. “You just don’t get it, Selina.”

“Maybe I don’t,” she admits with a shrug. “I’m not exactly a fan of his books but unlike you, I never had much problem with them even existing.”

Bruce doesn’t know how to explain it to her. He doesn’t know how to describe how much the character of Batman actually means to him, and how much it hurts when Napier goes after him and, by extension, after Bruce himself. And he definitely can’t find the words for how hot, bothered and _driven_ arguments with Napier make him feel, and how clear everything becomes, and how creative Bruce suddenly gets just to prove the bastard wrong, and how alive and sharp and crisp and in-the-moment those arguments seem, far more than anything else in Bruce’s life these days…

He can’t describe any of it because he doesn’t understand it himself. He doesn’t really care to understand. _Room 306_ bounces around in his head and trickles heat down low, into Bruce’s stomach and lower, hissing promises that the alcohol cruising in his system only amplifies.

He thinks maybe four shots one by one might have been overkill.

“I’m going to bed,” he decides before he starts to even consider the offer. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Maybe.” Selina’s eyes narrow mischievously. “Harley and Pam invited me over to their room for drinks.”

“More drinks,” Bruce corrects, amused despite himself.

“Yup. And if things go well, maybe something else, too.” Selina’s eyes glitter much like her love life does, and Bruce feels too happy for her to begrudge her that.

 _Room 306_ flashes at him when he fishes in his wallet for the money.

 _Shut it_ , he tells himself firmly. _We’re not doing that tonight._ Or ever again.

He leaves the money on the table and sways a little when he stands up. Selina laughs at him.

“Need help, big guy?”

“I’ve got it.” Bruce shakes his head to clear it. “It’s just. It’s been a while.”

“Don’t let Napier drive you into a drinking problem,” Selina advises.

Bruce smirks. “And give him the satisfaction?”

“That’s my boy.”

Bruce bids Selina a good night — though he doubts she needs his help with that — and slowly makes the short walk from the hotel bar back to the lobby. He wishes they’d picked a place somewhere in town; that way at least he’d have benefited from the warm, fresh San Diego night air. But at least he’ll be in his room in no time, and that’s not without its benefits either.

At least he thinks so right up until he turns to the elevators, stares, and actually groans out loud.

 _Napier_. Of all people. Standing there with his back to Bruce, waiting for the elevator, a light jacket thrown over his offensive yellow shirt. One bony hip thrust out, balancing his weight on one leg, hands in his pockets. The styled back of his obnoxiously green head smirking right at Bruce.

 _Room 306_.

Bruce tears his eyes away and drags himself toward the stairs before Napier can smell him the way he always seems to do. He’s not running away. He’s making a tactical retreat, and anyway, the exercise is good for you, so there, he wins.

But, of course, it’s just his rotten fucking luck that when he finally clears the stairs and reaches his floor — which has to be the third floor because that’s just how Bruce’s life works — the elevator dings and Napier steps out. It’s too late to duck back into the staircase; Napier’s eyes land straight on Bruce. They both stop dead in the corridor. They stare. And Bruce’s heart rattles into overdrive.

God, he wants to punch that stupid face all over again.

“So,” Napier drawls, then actually runs a tongue over his painted mouth, and something thick and hot and sticky swirls in Bruce’s abdomen. “ _Brucie_. Do you wanna —”

“No,” Bruce snaps immediately. “We’re not doing that.”

Napier considers him. His eyes rake up and down Bruce’s body in a way that makes the hot and sticky feeling hotter and stickier. He tilts his head to the side, arching the pale column of his neck, letting hair brush over his eyes. “Fine,” he says.

“So you can just. Go.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

They stand there in silence. Neither moves.

Finally, recognizing the by-now familiar tipping point in time before it can break through and push him the rest of the way, Bruce breaks the spell and stomps towards, and then past Napier. Napier turns lazily to watch him go. He doesn’t move towards his own room.

Bruce can still feel him staring as he fumbles for the keycard. The fine hairs at the back of his neck stand on end. His hands shake, just a little, as he presses the card against the doorhandle.

His head snaps to Napier before he can stop himself.

“What.”

Napier shrugs. “You sure you don’t wanna…?”

Bruce narrows his eyes in a glare. “Pretty sure.”

“Okay.” Napier looks down at the floor, and then back at Bruce, like he’s expecting Bruce to change his mind any second now.

“I won’t change my mind,” Bruce informs him.

“Okay.” Another shrug.

“You can’t just insult me in public and then expect —”

“I said okay.” Now there’s that familiar, mocking tilt to the curl of Napier’s mouth, and his eyes twinkle, and God, everything in Bruce itches to the point of distraction.

He wrestles his own door open. He’s just about to disappear inside and shut the door on everything that’s wrong with this world when Napier says, quietly, “By the way, you look really hot.”

Bruce stomps into his own room and slams the door as hard as he can.

He stares at it in the darkness.

He _won’t_. He _won’t he won’t he won’t_ …

Two minutes later he’s back out in the corridor.

“Napier!”

Napier turns, about to enter his own room at the other end of the corridor. “What?”

They stare at one another.

And then, his thoughts a string of expletives so fast and loud they blur into one profane rush, Bruce is striding towards him, and pushing him into the door, and closing his hands over Napier’s obnoxiously long throat.

“Inside,” he hisses. “Now.”

Napier smirks. His eyes darken as he whispers, “Right this way, sir.”

He doesn’t even turn, just presses on the handle behind himself. They stumble into the darkness of room 306 and start kissing as soon as the door clicks shut behind them.

 

***

 

“Bruce,” Napier breathes, “Bruce.”

His legs, already wide open, inch even further apart to coax Bruce deeper inside. Bruce slams into him, bouncing Napier’s pale skinny ass off his own stomach. He squeezes a pair of sharp-boned hips so hard it feels he might crush them to powder if he just tightens his grip a tiny bit more. He drives himself into Napier again and again and again, bending over to pant and groan into Napier’s arching, sweat-slick back, watching as the grotesque tattooed shapes there ripple with every thrust, every shiver of pleasure.

“Oh God,” Napier moans. “Oh God, yes.”

And Bruce goes harder. He goes so hard his cock aches with the pleasure, and the bed strains under them both. Napier’s too far gone, too out of breath to moan anymore but sounds slip out anyway, tight little gasp-breaths that go so well with his tight little ass, slick with lube and stretched so wide over Bruce, sucking in Bruce’s cock as far as it will go like a fucking magic trick, _hey look, I’m gonna make that big fat cock disappear —_

Bruce reaches and grabs a handful of messy green hair. He pulls, and Napier cries out, and his whole body arches with it, bending into a sinewy line.

“Come on,” Bruce pants, dragging his teeth over the hot wet skin of his throat. “Come on, you bastard.”

He fucks himself deep inside. He lets go of the hair to hook one arm over Napier’s chest and pull him higher, closer against his own body. He sneaks the other hand lower to palm at Napier’s cock, long and slender and wet just like the rest of him. He squeezes hard, and then strokes it up and down.

“Come on.”

He bites down on Napier’s throat and Napier comes, strangling a gasp, going all taut and vicious _tight_ , pulsing and throbbing and contracting around Bruce’s cock, spilling over Bruce’s hand and the sheets below.

Bruce thrusts and thrusts and thrusts as Napier rides out his orgasm before the body in his arms goes completely slack and Napier sighs, “ _Bruce_.” And then release finally hits and he’s coming too, his orgasm bright and hot and sizzling like an electric fissure through his nerve endings. He cries out and buries the sound in Napier’s shoulder, and stays there until he spills everything he has.

His head swims. He feels shaky, and floaty, and blurry around the edges. The tightness in his chest has eased somewhere along the way and there’s this familiar moment of — disorientation — where he struggles to find his bearings without it.

Napier hums. He pulls himself up in Bruce’s arms and curves around to lick a wet stripe up Bruce’s cheek.

Bruce opens his arms and lets him fall to the mattress. He hovers over Napier’s spent body for a minute, his breath rushed and arms trembling, and gives them another moment before he pulls out by inches, minding his orgasm-sensitive cock. He sits back and drags the sticky condom off. He tosses it to the floor, wipes the come off his hand on the bedsheets — at this point they’re already ruined — then collapses onto his back next to Napier and lies there panting, closing his eyes, letting the floaty feeling last as long as it will.

 _God. God_.

The room is silent save for their harrowed breathing. The air curls too warm with their sweat and the sour-sweet smell of sex, heavy, rank, oppressive.

He should open the window.

He stays where he is, and doesn’t move even when, eventually, Napier moves onto his side facing him, jostling both the mattress and Bruce’s fragile balance.

A finger finds its way to Bruce’s chest. It circles over one dark nipple. “Better now?”

“Shut up.”

“Awwww, come on. Can’t I even —”

“I said shut up.”

Napier does, but Bruce can still hear the smirk in the silence. The hand doesn’t leave and instead goes slack in a gentle curl in the hair on Bruce’s chest. Napier breathes out deeply, warm and sated. Bruce refuses to.

It’s only when his eyelids grow far too heavy and he catches himself keeping them closed for too long at a time that he finally finds the energy to move. His heart has slowed down to a normal rate by now, and only tender echoes of pleasure throb somewhere in his lower body while his head feels dull, blunted, the inevitable guilt only just beginning to coast the edges of his mind; the exhaustion and moral hangover, he knows, will present him with the bill tomorrow. They always do.

He sits up, letting Napier’s hand fall bonelessly off his chest and into his lap.

“So soon?” Napier asks lazily, voice already thick with sleep. “Won’cha stay?”

“If I stay any longer I’ll fall asleep.” Bruce gets to his feet and starts on the hunt for various articles of clothing strewn all over the room.

His boxer briefs are draped over the bedside lamp. Bruce struggles to remember how they got there.

“Would that be so bad?” Napier slurs, pulling the covers over himself.

Bruce pauses. He looks over his shoulder at the lumpy silhouette on the bed, moving to hug the pillow Bruce’s head was just lying on, pressing his nose into it.

“Yeah,” he mutters, shaking his head, “it would.” He goes back to his hunt. The ache in his chest is beginning to knot tight again.

Napier sighs. “Suit yourself. But I was hoping we might go for another round.”

Bruce’s face heats. It’s the air in the room — far too stifling. Napier really should open the window, not that Bruce cares.

He dresses without a comment, and Napier doesn’t offer any more of his own. In fact, by the time Bruce is ready to leave his breath is evening out, and when Bruce glances at him again it is to the sight of his eyes closed and his body slack, a small, sated smile spelled on his mouth.

Bruce leaves before the stirring of heat in his stomach gets any more distracting.

 

***

 

He doesn’t mean to come back the next night. He didn’t mean to start anything in the first place. But he did, and he does, because at this point, since that night two years ago, that’s just how this… thing between them works.

He sits on the edge of the bed. The room once again stinks of sex. His breath is still labored, and sweat cools on his skin, turning sticky. He looks over his shoulder at Napier — still blissed out after his orgasm, sprawled on his back with an arm thrown over his closed eyes — and wonders, as he does sometimes, what if he hadn’t punched Napier in front of a crowd that day? Would they have found some other excuse to add “fucking their brains out” to their already vicious cycle of mutual enmity?

Maybe. He’d noticed Napier’s admittedly peculiar brand of attractiveness before, which only made the guy’s overall — well, obnoxiousness — even worse. If it hadn’t been that night maybe it would have been some other, not that it matters. Because Bruce did punch him, and he did feel wretched about it, enough to go to the jerk’s room to say sorry, which… really didn’t turn out how he thought it would. At all.

Although he supposes that the shouting match they had right before their mouths sort of… crashed against each other… and before Napier dropped to his knees to fumble with the zipper of Bruce’s jeans… _was_ rather predictable. It’s not like they had ever been able to hold a civil conversation with each other before, face to face or even online. Why on Earth he’d expected that time to be any different, he still has no idea.

And now, here they are. Any con they happen to attend together (which is basically every con Bruce has to go to because of his contract, since contrary to him Napier is a shameless attention hogger who _loves_ appearing in front of adoring crowds and throws himself at every opportunity to do so), any awards ceremony, any industry event, it’s always the same damn story. They’ll see one another. They’ll hold each other’s eyes, and usually Napier will say something, and Bruce will say something back, and his blood will boil, and his heart will rush, and he’ll remember all the interactions they’ve had before, and he’ll fight it with everything he has but he’ll still end up at Napier’s hotel room door anyway because in the end he can’t help himself. Because there’s a part of him that _wants_ to feel what Napier makes him feel. The entire toxic sludge of hatred, indignation, disgust, frustration, sheer red hot anger all boiling to overflow when desire drops into the mix; desire to hurt, desire to mess up, desire to overpower and hold and fuck fuck fuck until all of those feelings spill out, until they’re both roughed up and empty so they can start to fill one another up again. And again. And again.

And the scary thing is, nothing else in Bruce’s life right now — not even working on a new book, not even brainstorming with his team, not even reading letters from younger readers about how much Batman and Bruce’s other characters helped them through hard times — can quite make Bruce feel as much as Napier does. As strongly as Napier does. And Bruce has discovered he needs to feel. He needs that spark of competition, of being _challenged_ , to keep himself going. He knows it’s not healthy but he _is_ creating better work because of it, just to finally publish an issue that Napier will have no choice but to praise, and it’s helping Bruce remember why he chose that particular career in the first place, why he’s doing what he does, and that…

He’s not yet at a point where he’s ready to give it up.

And if he’s honest with himself, as much as he hates the hollow morning-afters with their endless parades of self-hate and resolutions to never give in again, there’s also the fact that he enjoys the license to feel ugly. To act ugly. To have a way to release the ugly at someone who can take it, and bounce it right back at Bruce, so Bruce can keep himself and his work clean otherwise. He thinks he may have needed that.

He hopes, one day, he won’t anymore. That he’ll be able to say no to Napier and stick to it, and just ignore him instead of snapping back, and stay away. Maybe soon.

But for now it is what it is, and for better or worse, Bruce has… accepted it, however grudgingly. Because there’s one more thing Bruce can’t help: his tendency to rely on things that repeat themselves. He knows it’s a problem, and he doesn’t need to talk to any shrinks to guess where this particular tendency might come from, but the fact is, there’s something in Bruce that craves predictability. Boredom, repetitiveness… routine.

And this thing with Napier…

It’s part of a routine now, whether Bruce likes it or not.

He gets off the bed.

“You coming to New York?” Napier asks before Bruce can disappear through the door.

Bruce pauses. “Maybe.”

“Good.” He hears Napier shifting on the bed. “See you there, pumpkin.”

Bruce slams the door on the way out.

 

***

 

In hindsight he should have listened to his gut and just flat-out said no, both to Napier and to his boss. But he didn’t, and he did come to the New York Comic Con to promote his new young writers workshop, and he did so fully expecting their little fight-fuck-flight routine to carry on as normal.

And, well, it does. The first and second day of the con.

It’s on the third day that everything goes to shit.

It happens in the evening, when the writers and artists from both major publishers decide to descend upon one of the nearby pubs in full force for a little bipartisan socializing. Bruce is there because Selina and his team all but dragged him by the hair; Napier is there because he’s the kind of person who always shows up to these things whether anyone invites him or not.

And Bruce isn’t staring. He just happens to catch Napier’s eye — a lot. And his eyes just happen to fall where Napier is — a lot. It’s not Bruce’s fault that this has the highly inconvenient side-effect of reminding him of last night, and the way Napier’s pale wiry body undulated and gleamed with sweat as he rode Bruce’s cock into oblivion.

“Bruce.” Barbara bumps him with her elbow. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” Bruce mutters, trailing Napier’s progress across the pub.

“That.” Barbara gestures into his field of vision. Bruce turns to look at her. “Just, give it a rest. Ignore him.”

Bruce clears his throat and rubs the back of his neck. His cheeks are getting flushed, but that may be because he’s on his second beer. He mumbles, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Across from Bruce Clark Kent cranes his neck, then looks to Bruce and smiles in a way Bruce doesn’t like at all.

“What?” he demands.

“Nothing.” Clark looks into his beer, hooking an arm over Lois’s shoulder. “He’s wearing the Joker t-shirt again.”

“Stop egging him on,” Barbara sighs just as Bruce mutters, “I noticed.”

They look at one another. Barbara sweeps her hair off her shoulder and sips on her beer through a straw, looking exasperated, while Clark chuckles.

“I think it’s sweet,” Lois comments. “If I had a character created in my image I’d bask in it too.”

“You do have a character created in your image,” Dick points out.

“I know!” She ruffles Clark’s hair as he flushes. “And I own seven t-shirts of her, one for every day of the week.”

“He isn’t trying to be sweet,” Bruce insists. “He’s wearing that to irritate me.”

“Yeah, because everything Jack Napier does is to spite you,” Selina sums up fondly. “He has no autonomous thoughts. Every breath he takes is aimed to irritate Bruce Wayne.”

Bruce glares at her. “I’m not saying that. I’m just saying —”

“Aaaaaanyway, moving away from your enormous ego for a moment,” she raises her own glass, “I think I saw Steve Rogers over there. See you sadsacks later.”

She gets up and sashays away towards the bar and the distinct blond head of one of the competition’s brightest stars. Bruce’s eyes follow her out of habit only to once again snag on Napier, who’s currently leaning against the bar and talking animatedly to — or rather, at — a bored Lex Luthor.

He catches Bruce’s eye just as Bruce is about to tear his gaze away. He smirks. He licks his bottom lip, slowly, and suddenly Bruce remembers in startling detail exactly how this smirking, bloodred mouth looks stuffed full of Bruce’s cock. 

He clears his throat and tries and loosen his shirt collar.

“I’m gonna go outside,” he judges, standing up. “Get some air.”

“Do you want —” Dick offers, making a move to stand, but Bruce puts his hand up and stills him in his tracks.

“No. I’ll be right back. I just need…” He glances at Napier again and clears his throat. “I need to get outside for a bit.”

He’s just about to make good on his word when Vicky Vale bars his way, looking apologetic and holding up a beer like a peace offering.

“Hey,” she says.

Bruce nods at her. “Hey.”

“So.” She sighs, trying out a smile. “You gonna let me apologize for San Diego?”

This gives Bruce pause. He considers her more closely. “I didn’t know you did apologies.”

“When I’m in the wrong I do.” She pushes the beer in his direction and reluctantly, Bruce accepts. “That was my fault. I should have known better. Getting you two in the same room together is a recipe for disaster.”

Bruce feels a twinge of shame at that, which he hides in a hearty sip. “Look,” he says after a moment, “it’s not. It’s us. We screwed up. You were right, I should have been better than that.”

“Him, too, but I should really learn to manage my expectations.”

Bruce finds a smile for her, and she smiles back, more openly this time. She steps closer.

“I was thinking,” she says softly. “Would you like to go somewhere more quiet? We haven’t talked in a while. I’d like to catch up.”

Bruce sighs. “I’m not sure that’s a very good idea, Vicky.”

“Oh, come on. That was a long time ago. We were kids. Maybe this time it’d be better.”

“I don’t —” Bruce starts, but he’s interrupted by a hand planting itself firmly on his shoulder. A set of sharp, green-painted nails digs into his jacket, and the stuffy air gains a citrusy note.

“What do we have here?” Napier sing-songs, stepping much too close to Bruce. “Are you crazy kids up to no good? Should I arrange for a chaperone?”

“Hi, Jack.” Vicky sighs, stepping away from Bruce. “You’re drunk.”

“I’m jolly,” Napier corrects her gleefully. “I just had a most stimulating talk with Lexie over there and then I saw you two lovebirds twittering away, and I thought, I just gotta be a part of that!”

Bruce pushes away from him, letting him sway. “I’m sure Lex misses your company,” he barks.

“Oh, no, actually he can’t stand me,” Napier confesses in an obnoxious stage whisper. He grins. “And that’s what makes it fun!”

“Whatever does it for you,” Vicky tells him dryly. “Bruce and I were actually in the middle of something so if you don’t mind, I’m sure there are lots of other people in this pub you can chat u—”

“Hey Vicky, did you know that the chance of successfully getting back together with your ex is really really really small?” Napier chatters. “I just read this _fascinating_ little article the other day and golly, was it ever so illuminating! Y’see, there’s this dating specialist Lorna Something-Something, and she said, she said —”

“I think I have a pretty good idea.” Vicky rubs her temple.

“Napier,” Bruce snaps, but Napier apparently isn’t done.

“If you ask me, that’s just freakin’ sad,” he prattles, trying to insinuate himself into Bruce’s personal space again. “I mean, just move on, am I right? There’s gotta be a reason why it didn’t work in the first place. Can’t put the spilled milk back in the bottle! Or was that crying over a genie? Because now that I think about it you actually can put milk back in the bottle, but the point is, my point is, why sign up for the ride again if you’re just gonna be miserable? Because you don’t wanna die alone? Sad, I’m telling ya.” He pauses, taking in their pointed glares, and does a theatrical “Oh!” face.

“Hey, didn’t you two used to date?” he asks. “Awkward! My bad, you two, ignore everything I just said!”

He pats Bruce on the shoulder, takes the beer from his hand and sips on it, grinning at Vicky without the tiniest hint of remorse.

And that just fucking does it.

“Excuse us, Vicky,” Bruce says as he gives the beer back to her, then grabs Napier’s jacket and starts to haul him to the exit. “Just gotta take care of the trash.”

“Sweettalker,” Napier coos, letting himself be manhandled without a fight.

He doesn’t resist even as Bruce drags him past the small cluster of amused smokers outside and towards the back door, into an alley replete with dumpster stench and rats scurrying over sad little leftover puddles. The smell here is too bad for anyone to linger for long, which will just have to do. Bruce is far too worked up to wait until they get to a hotel room.

“What the fuck,” he demands, “is wrong with you?”

“I gotta say, I do not appreciate the _eau de ordure_ ,” Napier remarks, wrinkling his nose.

Bruce grabs him by the lapels of his leather jacket and pushes him up against the filthy brick wall.

Napier giggles in his face, collecting hair out of his eyes, bringing his hands up to close around Bruce’s wrists. His breath stinks of alcohol, but then again Bruce probably isn’t one to talk. He glances down to find the grin from Napier’s Joker t-shirt matching the grin currently plastered on his gaunt face almost perfectly, giving Bruce a sudden flash of surreality.

Or maybe that’s just the beer. He’s never had much of a head for alcohol.

“Now what?” Napier wonders. “Ya gonna ravish me here among the filth and the rats? Because if you are, that’s just peachy. A little high school but I can dig that. In fact, this reminds me of this one time, this guy called Owen walks up to me and goes —”

“Shut up.”

Napier’s eyes narrow. “Hey. That’s my story. Have some originality and come up with your own.” His smirk turns cruel when he adds, “Though I guess judging by your books I should manage my expectations.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you,” Bruce repeats. “What was all that about back there?”

Napier blinks. “Whatever could you mean?”

“Don’t even start,” Bruce growls. “I just want to know what the fuck you were thinking, what, that you have the right to just come up to me and be all clingy, in _public_ —”

“She wanted in your pants,” Napier says simply.

“If she did, it’s none of your goddamn business,” Bruce points out. “We never said anything about being exclusive.”

And that’s true. They’ve never actually said anything about… well, anything. This is already the longest conversation they’ve ever had about this _thing_ between them, and Bruce doesn’t want to have it, especially here and now, but it seems that it’s time whether he likes it or not.

“Sure.” Napier shrugs, as much as he’s able with Bruce still pinning him to the wall. “But the thing is, if you start dating her, you’ll stop fucking me. You’re just that kind of guy. Honorable. A proper gent. You wouldn’t two-time a lady like that. And I didn’t fancy losing your superb fucking skills just yet.”

It takes Bruce a while to parse that, but eventually, he manages. “You’re… jealous,” he translates slowly.

Napier’s eyes narrow, bright and cat-like in the drab alley. “I’m not particularly fond of sharing, no.”

“Jesus, Napier.” Bruce takes a deep breath. “You could have just said.”

“You never asked.”

“Neither did you!”

“Didn’t wanna spook ya, babe,” Napier coos, shooting Bruce a smile that is probably meant to look disarming. “Your sensibilities are already soooooo delicate, I was afraid if I asked for just a teensy lil bit of commitment you’d get the vapors.”

Bruce risks letting go of Napier to run a frustrated hand over his face, feeling it flush as his mind spins. “Are you just gonna keep sabotaging me?”

“Until you break up with me properly?” Napier appears to consider it, then grins. “Yup!”

Bruce studies him, thoughts swirling like a sinkhole in the middle of the ocean. “That’s one hell of a way to say you do want to be exclusive,” he whispers.

“See, Brucie, it’s like this.” Napier touches Bruce’s nose and bops it gently. “I like you. I love your dick. The one with lowercase ‘d,’ I mean, not that kid with the cute butt you drag around everywhere, and by the way I always wondered, what is up with that? But anyway, where was I… ah yes. I like you. You give me the best sex I could ever hope for. Naturally a guy’s gonna be protective of the good thing once he finds it.”

“Napier,” Bruce asks, considering him in an entirely new light. “Are you, by any chance… confessing to me?”

“Well.” Napier seems to consider the question with some difficulty, knitting his green-dyed eyebrows tight. “I guess I am, if you wanna think of it this way.”

“You want us to be exclusive.”

“I don’t want you to fuck anyone else.”

“So,” Bruce insists. “Exclusive.”

“Brucie buddy,” Napier sighs as though Bruce is the one being particularly difficult, “you really can be oblivious sometimes. I live in Queens. And I still rented a hotel room for this con because I knew you’d be coming, and I knew you wouldn’t wanna soil your own room with my presence or visit my humble abode. So make like the World’s Greatest Detective and deduce me.”

Bruce stares at him, parsing all that. He shakes his head.

“You’re an asshole,” he tells Napier with feeling. The flush in his face is getting worse. “You couldn’t tell me any of it sooner? You had to wait until you got drunk?”

“Would you have listened?” Napier challenges. “’Cause I don’t think you would. I think you’d have run with your tail between your legs, screaming. And I didn’t particularly fancy jeopardizing our little arrangement just to get yelled at.”

“Then why do it now?” Bruce demands.

Napier shrugs. “She wanted in your pants,” he repeats like it’s obvious. “And you were considering it. And I _am_ pretty drunk. So I decided to play the hero.”

“What in the name of fuck was heroic about that?”

“Oh, don’t you see?” Napier’s eyes glint far too bright in the dirty lamplight. “I was not just saving my right to a great fuck. I was saving Vicky, too.” He leans in, mouth curving into a cruel smile. “Don’t you think she doesn’t deserve your shit?” His face gets so close Bruce can smell the alcohol on his breath. “She doesn’t,” he whispers. “She’s too good for you. They all are: Vicky, Kyle, Kent, Grayson, Allen... You belong right here with me, honey.” He kisses Bruce’s cheek. “In the gutter.”

At this point it’s either punch him or kiss him, or both, and Bruce ends up going for the second option only because, what with how close they’re pressed to one another, there isn’t all that much room to swing.

They kiss right there in the dirty alley, among the dumpsters and the rats scurrying across yesterday’s puddles in the dark, caught on the edge of dull golden lamplight. It’s brutal the way it always is with them, teeth pulling and biting and tongues sliding wetly along each other and mouths pressing much too close, and hands grasping for leverage, and fingernails driving over skin. At some point Napier pushes himself up by hooking his arms around Bruce’s neck and his legs around his waist, and Bruce crowds him even closer into the wall, smothering all air between their bodies to nothing. He grabs Napier’s ass to keep him up and starts to grind, and Napier rocks in contra, panting into Bruce’s neck, closing his teeth over the tender skin just below Bruce’s ear.

“Nice,” he purrs. “Never took you for that kinda guy. Gonna jizz in your pants for me, baby?”

Bruce pulls him away from the wall to smack him back against it. Napier yelps in pain as his back takes the hit.

“You talk too much,” Bruce tells him, before shutting him up with his own mouth.

Napier makes a tight needy noise at the back of his throat as he grasps for Bruce again, pulling him closer. He keeps rocking his hips and Bruce wants to smirk into the kiss because who’s the one about to come in his pants, again? He stills his own hips but lets Napier grind against him, and hums into his mouth because he can’t deny that the friction feels damn good. His cock is definitely interested in the proceedings even with the foul stench of the alley and the undercurrent of _this is ridiculous_ thrumming in his head. They’re a pair of grown-ass men. For two years they’ve managed to avoid getting caught but sooner or later one of Bruce’s party is bound to start wondering what’s taking him so long…

He gives them a couple more minutes before he pries himself away and forces Napier’s legs to unlock from around his waist. He lets the bastard stumble to the ground.

“Hey, what’s the big idea?” Napier asks a tad breathlessly as Bruce puts some distance between them. “We were doing so well!”

“I don’t know about you but I want to believe I still have some standards.” Such as they may be. Bruce straightens his jacket and runs a hand through his hair to get it into a semblance of order.

“Getting off in an alley is where you draw the line?” Napier seems amused by this, chuckling as he attempts to get his own appearance in order.

Bruce shrugs. “Yeah, I guess.”

“So… to be continued?” Napier asks hopefully. “I could order us some champagne.”

Bruce eyes him, up and down, from the top of his ridiculous hair down to the unlaced army boots. He’s still half-hard, and his cock twitches eagerly.

“Maybe.” He tucks his hands into the pocket of his jacket. “No champagne though. No nothing. I don’t care what you think, Napier — it’s not a date.”

Napier smirks. “Whatever you say, juicy Brucie.”

They watch each other for a moment, and Bruce imagines that a spark of understanding passes between them. An agreement. He doesn’t say anything about being exclusive anymore but he does have a feeling he’s just agreed to it anyway, and that Napier read it in his… well, everything. He doesn’t have to tell Napier that he was never going to say yes to Vicky’s offer anyway. That secretly, he agrees with Napier about gutters.

Napier holds his gaze and smiles.

Then the moment bursts, and Bruce turns to leave.

As soon as he does he thinks he catches a glimpse of a darting movement out of the corner of his eye, but when he follows it he only sees Napier, who has procured a hand mirror from God only knows where and is critically examining the smudges of lipstick on his face, mumbling something sing-songy about designer brands.

“Have you seen anything?” Bruce asks.

“Only your delicious derriere, honey-pie,” Napier says. “Those jeans fit you real nice by the way.”

Bruce rolls his eyes and decides to give it up. He leaves Napier to his primping and takes his time ambling back to the pub, letting the chilly air rush the rest of his arousal away. He feels much better — lighter — some of the wound-up feeling released for the time being, and he manages a smile when his own group welcomes him back with alcoholic vivacity.

He isn’t surprised to discover that Vicky is nowhere to be found.

Later he spends one last night in Napier’s hotel room, and takes considerable satisfaction in actually ripping apart the Joker t-shirt. He lets the guy suck him against a wall before he grabs for him and throws him on the bed, and fucks himself between two pale thighs, reaching around to roughly pump Napier's cock. It feels good, and brings the kind of dark, bone-deep satisfaction Bruce has come to expect, and when he makes it back to his own room he starts planning out a new story arc starring the Joker.

He tries not to dwell on the scene in the alley. No good would come from that, and he’s too pumped to start working on his new story idea to waste brainspace on anything unrelated anyway. So what if he’s more or less agreed to not fuck anyone else but Napier for a while? It’s not exactly like he’d been pulling right and left in the first place. When it comes down to it, nothing has really changed. They’ve just… drawn up some rules, is all. That alone doesn’t have to mean anything.

And so, when he finally lies down to sleep after 8am the next morning, he expects to wake up to find the world exactly as he left it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haven't forgotten about this little baby! A shorter update this time, but hopefully you'll like it. 
> 
> Don't forget to check out Mellie's wonderful art designs for this AU's Bruce and J linked at the bottom, they're absolutely gorgeous! *o*

 

He’d been so stupid.

It starts with someone knocking on his door, bullying him out of vague uneasy dreams he’s far too tired to remember. He’s still half-asleep when he rolls onto the other side and clings to the covers.

“Bruce!” A familiar voice calls from beyond the door. “Open up! It’s Dick.”

“What is it?” Bruce slurs, peeling his eyes open.

“You up?”

“Do I sound like I’m up?”

“You had your phone turned off for the night, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” Bruce pushes himself up, more alert by the minute. There’s a tightness in Dick’s voice that he doesn’t like one bit. “Why?”

“You… might wanna check your twitter.” There’s a loaded pause. “Or actually, you know what, don’t. Don’t log onto twitter ever, ever again. And please open the door.”

Bruce’s heart takes a sharp dive to his feet. Suddenly he’s wide awake and sitting up, fighting past the fist of panic closing into a chokehold around his throat. His mind does a lightning-fast inventory of all the things he’s said and done over the last 24 hours and nothing strikes him as particularly scandal-worthy, unless…

He thinks of the alley. 

No, he tells himself immediately. That can’t be it. He’s been careful. There was no one there. No one could have... 

“Dick,” he demands as he opens the door. “What is it?”

Dick’s face is pale and strained, and haggard as though he got even less sleep than Bruce did. He says nothing. Instead, he pushes past Bruce and sits on the bed, and pulls up the lid of the laptop he’s lugged along with him. He looks up at Bruce.

“You’re gonna want to sit down.”

“What is it?” Bruce repeats, heart in his throat, as he perches down beside him.

Instead of answering, Dick sighs. He looks worried and strangely sad as he angles the screen of the laptop towards Bruce. He plays him a Youtube video. 

Bruce only needs to see the title of the clip — _Bruce Wayne and Jack Napier making out???!!!_ — and a glimpse of the alley from last night, caught from the perspective of someone hiding behind the corner of the pub, to experience the cold, cold jolt that usually happens when someone trips and falls onto unforgiving pavement. 

Oh no. No no no no NO — 

His mind goes black and cold. The movement in the alley — he remembers now, he saw a movement and he thought it must have been a rat, a _rat_...

His stomach heaves. That’s all the warning he gets before it gives a violent lurch, and he shuts the lid of the laptop fast as he can, races to the ensuite bathroom and violently empties the contents of last night’s dinner into the toilet bowl.

Out of the corner of his eye he spies Dick’s tall silhouette lingering in the doorway to the bathroom. There’s silence as Bruce pants into the toilet. 

Then a gentle voice asks, “Are you okay?”

Bruce shakes his head. He’s gripping the cold toilet bowl so hard he half-expects to leave finger-shaped imprints in the ceramic, and his mouth tastes like acid. His wet eyes press shut.

Jesus.

“I’m gonna get you water,” Dick decides. “Hang on.”

He disappears into the room. Bruce makes himself focus on the sounds of his bustling around as he struggles to flush the toilet, then hoists himself up to sit on the closed lid. Focus, he orders his swimming mess of a mind. Fucking _focus_ , dammit. 

He accepts the blessedly cold water from Dick and gulps it all down in one go, hands trembling. After a minute he whispers, “Xanax.”

“Where?”

“My bag. Outer pocket.”

“Gotcha.”

He listens to Dick’s feet rushing around the room, and then accepts the pill Dick deposits into his hand along with a plastic water bottle. Bruce takes the pill and swallows more greedy sips, and sits back, and tries to breathe.

Finally, he whispers, “How bad is it?”

“Um.” Dick sits down in an inelegant sprawl on the floor across from him. He looks wretched. “Pretty bad,” he admits. 

“Can you,” Bruce takes another deep breath, “can you tell it’s us?”

“Well, I mean… The quality isn’t very good,” Dick allows. “It’s dark and grainy. But it’s _Napier_ , Bruce. Even here in New York the guy kinda stands out. And your body type is a bit of a giveaway too. Plus you’re both wearing the clothes you had at the con yesterday, so… yeah, no, at this point no one has any doubts anymore. Last I checked there’s already been three thinkpieces.”

Bruce tightens his grip on the bottle. The plastic groans as it’s bent out of shape.

“What’s in,” he struggles, “what did they…”

“The sound’s bad so it’s hard to make out what you’re saying,” Dick says quietly. “But it starts with you shouting at him. I’m… I’m assuming it was about that stunt he pulled with Vicky?”

Bruce nods. He keeps his eyes closed.

“Yeah, so, you were yelling at him, and then you… uh. You know. I mean, you were there.”

Bruce was, God help him. He presses a hand to his forehead. 

“How long?” he whispers.

“Does it really matter at this point?”

“How long.”

Dick is silent for a moment. “Right up until you step away from him,” he says. “Then whoever took the video split.”

 

Jesus fucking Christ.

Bruce’s weight tips forward, the bulk of it coming to rest on his lap. He stares blankly at the generic white floor tiles. He asks, “Who did it?”

“No idea,” Dick whispers. “We’re thinking it was some —” 

There’s a series of bangs against the door and Tim’s voice, shouting, “We got him!”

Dick shoots to his feet and scrambles to open the door. Bruce hesitates; the idea of moving at all right now seems beyond his capabilities. But the bedroom is already stirring with a flurry of upset, raised voices, Dick and Tim and Barbara all talking over one another and repeating his name, and soon one of them will poke their head inside, checking up on him, and he — 

He doesn’t want them to see him hunched over himself all small and pathetic on the toilet seat.

So he makes himself stand and drags himself out of the bathroom to face them, even though his legs feel like they’ve been borrowed from someone else and his head is a rush of white noise. 

Silence falls over the bedroom as he steps out into murky daylight. Eyes turn to him, anxious and wide, like he’ll fall apart if they so much as breathe loudly at him. Bruce looks at the cautious, guarded faces of his team — his family — and sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose. He supposes he can wave the role model position goodbye, not that he’d ever been any good at it to begin with.

Time to face the music. 

“This,” he struggles eventually, “isn’t quite how I imagined you guys finding out.”

They’re quiet for a minute or so, looking between one another with pinched expressions Bruce can’t read. Then Barbara asks, “How _did_ you imagine it?”

Bruce looks at her. “Not at all?” he tries.

A tiny smile breaks onto her face, there for half a second and gone the next. She shrugs. “Figures.”

“We managed to track down the guy who uploaded it,” Tim says into the uneasy silence. “Like I suspected, he isn’t a journo or anything like that. Just a fan. Has a bit of a rep for stalking industry people at cons. Collects autographs, pictures, stuff like that. I remember him - the small guy in Batman cosplay, shows up whenever there’s a signing? Calls himself Bat-Mite? Wanted to pitch you a sidekick character? Should be easy enough to scare him with a lawsuit and get him to take it down.”

“Probably thought he’d be getting a big break with this,” Dick mutters. “King of freaking 4chan.”

“The problem is,” Barbara says, “taking it down is a good step but…”

“The Internet is forever,” Bruce finishes for her.

“Yeah,” Tim agrees after a moment. “And it’s been up for hours now. People are… uh, they’re already giffing it. It’s all over twitter and facebook and even tumblr. Which means they’ve saved it on their hard drives and it’ll be impossible to hunt them all down. It’s gonna keep popping up all over the place no matter what we do.”

“We can set up Google alerts and ask them to keep taking the videos down as they pop up,” Barbara advises, “but that won’t get the cat back in the bag. You’re out. Sorry, Bruce.”

Another heavy silence drapes over the room as the implications of that statement truly sink in.

 _You’re out._ Just like that. And there’s nothing they can do about it.

He’s out, and he’s been caught with Jack fucking Napier.

The more Bruce worries the thought around in his head the bigger it gets, until he feels like if he tries to grasp it any harder he’ll start screaming and kicking down walls. He refuses to even look at his phone, already imagining the storm waiting for him there. So he decides to chop it down to smaller bits. He looks at each of the kids on his team in turn, and finally manages to articulate one of the many, many things that have sat on the tip of this tongue ever since this conversation began:

“Don’t you guys want me to explain?”

Barbara shrugs again and folds her hands in her lap, avoiding his eyes. Tim looks uneasy, a little greenish, fiddling with the skin around his cuticles. Dick rubs the back of his head. 

“Not a whole lot to explain,” he mumbles. 

“Yeah,” Barbara agrees. “You were filmed grinding with him up against a wall. This isn’t exactly a vague sort of situation we’re dealing with here.”

“But you don’t seem surprised,” Bruce observes quietly.

Once again the three of them exchange glances.

“We’ve had hours to talk about it,” Tim explains quietly. “The vid went viral at around 5am. We’ve been trying to reach you, tracking the situation, looking for the guy who did it, and, uh… we talked about it. A lot.”

“Right. We’ve pretty much talked ourselves out,” Dick agrees. “And, uh…”

“I knew,” Barbara says. She looks vaguely apologetic. “I’ve known since last year’s SDCC.”

Bruce stares at her. He can’t even bring himself to ask how.

“Remember how I had this idea about the Batgirl special?” she asks, reaching to self-consciously play with a strand of her flaming red hair. “And I came to your room in the morning to talk about it?”

Slowly, Bruce nods.

“And you said you wanted to shower first.”

Bruce nods again, feeling cold.

“You got a text when you were in the shower,” Barbara explains, looking away from him. “I saw the J. name and… and I guess I got curious? And it’s not like we’re not constantly in each other’s stuff anyway, so I… looked.”

Well, shit. Bruce remembers that text. It’s one of those he can never bring himself to delete, so he stores them on his Mac in a secret folder to pull up and stare at when he’s feeling particularly self-flagellatory or… well, or horny. 

He moves back to lean against the wall behind him, closing his eyes.

“I see,” he murmurs. 

“Yeah. It was… graphic.” Barbara looks at the ground. “I’m sorry.”

“She didn’t tell any of us,” Dick assures Bruce. “I mean, not until this morning.”

“Right. I kept the sordid details to myself all this time. Just for that, you should give me a raise,” Barbara murmurs. 

“Bruce can’t give you a raise,” Tim points out, in that way he has where he can’t quite let any kind of inaccuracy go. “You need to ask Luthor for that.”

Barbara folds her arms across her chest. “Well, Bruce should go up to Luthor and ask him for a raise for me, then. It took a _lot_ out of me to sit on this secret for a year. I deserve that raise.”

“You wouldn’t have had this problem if you weren’t snooping through Bruce’s stuff in the first place,” Dick argues. 

“Oh please, like you’d have done any different.”

“I would! I never look into you guys’ texts.”

“Dick Grayson, that is a blatant lie. You were going through Jason’s texts only yesterday at that party. I saw you.” 

“That — I was teasing him! That’s different!”

“Whoa whoa whoa, guys,” Tim intervenes, shushing them. “We’re getting wayyyy offtopic here. And Bruce looks like he’s gonna keel over.”

 

They pause to stare at him once again, and with that, Bruce makes the executive decision to let this go for now. He’ll have a talk with Barbara about privacy and respecting it later, when the contents of the text in question — very graphic indeed — aren’t rushing through his mind to spill heated red all over his face. 

And when he doesn’t have to deal with being forced out of the closet before even having his first cup of coffee.

Which, all right. First things first.

“Tim,” he says, “coffee. Please.”

“Right, yeah, okay.” Tim deposits his own laptop in Barbara’s care with fresh go-getter energy of someone who finally got permission to get out of the awkward zone. 

“Now,” Bruce says, moving to sit down in the armchair across from the bed, “why didn’t you come to my room earlier?”

“We did,” Barbara counters pointedly. “The door was shut and you weren’t responding. Your phone was off.”

“Yeah, so we kinda assumed you were… with him.”

Bruce sags into the armchair. He remembers putting the headphones in to keep all noise out as he worked last night, the way he always does when he gets in the zone, and then there was earlier, in Napier’s room…

“You were, weren’t you?” Barbara asks, sounding a little queasy.

Bruce rubs a hand over his face. _Jesus_. 

“Yeah,” he whispers as the guilt of it sticks to his ribs. “But not the whole night. I was working after that.” He hesitates. “We… I never stay the night.”

 _Even though he wants me to._ Or wanted, especially last night. Shit, does Napier even know? Or is he still asleep, hugging Bruce’s pillow tight in that obnoxious way he has, blissfully unaware of the secret crashing and burning around them?

Or is he on twitter, gleefully bragging? The thought of what he might say to the public is almost enough to send Bruce flying for the toilet bowl again. 

Shit shit _shit_ , why did he EVER think that hooking up with the guy in any way would be a good idea?

But of course he didn’t. He wasn’t thinking at all, is the problem. The sight of Napier dropping to his knees for him and putting his impossibly malleable _obnoxious_ painted mouth in the general vicinity of Bruce’s zipper, green eyes dark with hunger and promise, was enough for all objections to fly out the window. 

Well, one thing’s for sure: Bruce won’t be making that same mistake again.

“Charming,” Barbara judges, scattering the memory. “Thanks for this insight into your sex life. Now can we move on?” 

Bruce nods. Yeah. Moving on. Moving on is a good idea. 

He brings his hands together. He turns to Dick and asks, “Phone.”

Dick winces. “Are you sure?”

“No.” Bruce releases a breath. “Let’s get this over with.”

Obediently, Dick passes Bruce the phone from the nightstand and, with a hammering heart, Bruce turns it on. Instantly his screen floods with a rush of notifications: texts, missed calls, emails, to say nothing of his social media blowing up. Feeling sick again, Bruce only gives it all a cursory glance, noting the 50 missed calls from Alfred with an even sharper lurch, and then puts the thing away. 

Later. He’ll deal with it later when he’s not tasting his own vomit in his mouth.

Instead he turns back to the kids and says, “Damage control. Just how bad is it?”

He can already imagine it pretty damn well himself. Dick only confirms his worst suspicions by listing online reactions from different sections of the community, starting with conservative fanboy outrage — “They’re practically frothing at the mouth and there’s already a boycott hashtag going” — through discussions and thinkpieces about the ethics of leaking the video and about queer politics in the industry, all the way to enthusiastic fanfiction about himself and Napier from the other side of the fandom. There’s apparently several articles out doing a dissection of his and Napier’s appearances together to fish for “clues” to their developing relationship. To the surprise of absolutely no one the punching video is making the rounds again, spawning new memes around it. There’s also speculation about whether or not there’s even more of Napier in the Joker than everyone suspected, and whether they should look at the homoerotic subtext between him and Batman — “What homoerotic subtext?” Bruce asks, only to be met with silence and pointed looks from both his partners — as an indication of Bruce and Napier’s relationship. Dick is in the middle of explaining why Bruce should never, under no circumstances, check his tumblr, when there’s another knock at the door and Bruce gets up to let Tim back in.

It’s not Tim.

“Hey,” Napier says, “can we talk?”

Bruce’s first instinct is to slam the door in his face. 

But then his thinking brain kicks in, and he sighs, and surrenders to the inevitable. “I suppose we have to,” he murmurs. He steps aside. “Get in.”

He does shut the door when Napier walks past him into the room. It feels only marginally satisfying.

“Hiya, kiddos,” Napier greets Dick and Barbara, standing in the middle of the room with his hands in the pockets of his pajama pants. They’re Batman print pajama pants, and to add insult to injury, they seem half a size too large, just loose enough to hang obscenely low over Napier’s sharp hipbones, the purple tank top he’s wearing just short and tight enough on him to leave a pale strip of skin in-between. 

_Jesus fuck, concentrate,_ Bruce reminds himself. They’re in the middle of a crisis here. If he could stop ogling Napier’s hips right about now, that would be just peachy, please and thank you, brain.

It doesn’t really help that Napier doesn’t look much more rested than Bruce is, his hair for once the kind of mess that has nothing to do with product and everything to do with sleep and the way Bruce was pulling at it hours ago. There’s yesterday’s makeup still on his face, too, smudged and grainy, adding to the tired shadows pooling around his eyes. He must have been woken up in much the same manner that Bruce was, probably by Harley. Bruce almost winces in sympathy at the thought. At least Dick has an indoor voice. 

And that would mean Napier still hasn’t washed after their night together.

...Yeah, Bruce really needs his coffee. 

“Hi, Jack,” Dick offers, making a valiant effort to smile and cover up his discomfort like the angel he is. For her part Barbara doesn’t say anything and stares furiously at her own fingernails, cheeks going almost red enough to match the shade of her hair.

“So you guys probably wanna talk alone, right?” Dick decides after an awkward moment of silence. 

_No_ , Bruce wants to say, but once again his common sense manages to win out. “Give us a few minutes,” he asks. “This probably won’t take long.”

This prompts Napier to shoot him a dirty glare that he’s fairly certain he’s seen the Joker wear in more than one panel, and the uncanny valley impression sends a chill to trickle down his spine. He stands his ground though and doesn’t let himself be bullied into looking away, and so they stand there, locked in a glaring contest like the idiots they are, as Dick and Barbara hurriedly scramble to clear the war zone and almost tiptoe on their way out, closing the door on them with the quietest of clicks as though any louder noise might trigger a nuclear strike. 

Then it’s just the two of them, in sulky, seething silence. Great.

“You know,” Napier says after a moment, affecting a smirk, “this has gotta be the first time I’ve ever been in your room.”

It’s bait. Bruce decides not to take it. “We’ve pinned down the guy who posted the video,” he tells Napier instead. “We’re gonna ask him to take it down.”

“A great comfort, I’m sure,” Napier’s smirk gains a cruel edge as he throws himself back to sit on the bed. “You do realize it won’t do jack shit at this point.”

“It’s _something_ ,” Bruce counters. “What would you have us do?”

Napier shrugs. He wrings his hands together and starts to pick at the mangled skin around his fingernails, bending his head, letting the stiff, messy hair fall over his eyes. 

“How about,” he murmurs after a long moment, still engrossed in his nails. Bruce notices that his right leg is beginning to jerk up and down. “How about. How about we just leave it up?”

“What,” Bruce is so baffled he staggers back into the chair across from the bed. “Why the fuck would we want to leave it up? Are you insane?”

“Yeah,” Napier shrugs, “and I’ve got the papers to prove it, too, but that’s beside the point. I’m just saying. Maybe it’d be better... to just leave it. Like it’s no big deal. You know?”

“No,” Bruce grits out, “no, I don’t know. I don’t get what you’re saying at all. How can this not be a big deal?”

“Will you just listen,” Napier hisses, finally looking up. “I mean, obviously we have to react somehow. But why not just… turn it into a joke?”

“A joke.”

“Yeah. Like, haha, ooops, you got us, the game’s up, we’re sleeping with each other, now everybody go home? If you go into this thing guns blazing and pearls clutched you’re only going to end up looking like a giant dirty hypocrite and they’ll laugh at you anyway. Why not turn it around while we still can? Why not make the joke on them?”

Bruce just stares at him. After a moment Napier lets his head drop again. The jerk in his leg is getting worse.

“We could call for a press conference,” he murmurs. “Laugh the whole thing off. Take a few questions. Make it look ridiculous that it’s a scandal at all. People have sex with other people, news at 11.” He hunches his shoulders, drawing in on himself. Looking small in the tank top and pants. He starts scratching an angry red path along one pale, tattooed shoulder. 

It’s probably the first time Bruce has ever seen him like this — genuine, open, _unsure_ — and it brings a strange ache to thud somewhere far too unsettling to think about. 

He doesn’t let it derail him. Not when what Napier is proposing is so completely out of the question.

“It’s not a joke to me,” he barks. “I’m not going to pretend that it is.”

“If you could only — ”

“No. It’s different for you. You’re out. People expect that kind of thing from you.”

Napier’s head snaps up. “What the fuck was that supposed to mean?”

“I’m not like that,” Bruce presses, ignoring him. “I don’t want to air my dirty laundry out in the public eye. I hate attention. And I wasn’t out up until now because my sex life is _private_ and I wanted to keep it that way. It’s not a _joke_ to me that everyone knows I’m bisexual now without me having any say in the matter, and it’s not a joke that —”

“Is it really that,” Napier challenges, “or is it because you were caught with _me_?”

His eyes blaze. It’s a kind of fire Bruce doesn’t think he’s seen there before — genuine, toxic, as though just a touch of his skin now could burn a hole clean through Bruce’s. It chills him and the unsettling ache gets worse, pinching where it previously just throbbed.

He wonders what it means that Napier’s never looked this genuinely pissed when they fought before.

He thinks he knows, and doesn’t like the answer one bit.

Even so, somehow, he manages to hold that gaze. He says, “Both.”

Napier flinches. His bony shoulders draw in as though Bruce has just raised a hand to hit him. Bruce doesn’t manage to get a clear look of his face before the guy hides it in his hands, and his body starts to jerk.

Oh no. Oh shit. Is he —

That’s then the first sound reaches him, and he freezes where he sits. That obnoxious green-haired little shit is _laughing_.

“Of course,” Napier hisses between hiccups of laughter that sound brittle, jagged, sharp like broken glass. “You wouldn’t be this pissed if you were caught with like, Kent. Nooo. It’s me. I’m the problem. Fuck you.”

“You can’t say this doesn’t look weird,” Bruce protests, refusing to let the bastard guilt-trip him. “We could never have a conversation in public without getting into a fight. They know this. It’d… It’s weird.”

“Oh, sure,” Napier snaps, “because that’s the problem.”

“I told you what the problem is,” Bruce insists. “This video is borderline pornography. I don’t want it on youtube, or anywhere. It’s _private_.” 

“Yeah, and it’s with me. However will your loyal followers stand it? Such a paragon of virtue, sullied by my vile hand! Brought down to the gutter! Oh, the tragedy, the outrage, the grinding of innocent teenage teeth!”

“Napier —”

“Honestly, Bruce, can’t we just tell them we’re boyfriends and be done with it? We’d tell them we kept it a secret because you didn’t want to raise a scandal, which is true enough, and sooner or later it will all die down. Why do you have to make such a big fucking deal out of everything?”

Well, damn, Bruce thinks, eyes going wide as his heart stutters. Did he just say — 

Bruce studies Napier with all of his twitchy self-consciousness. Noticing the tight lines of his muscle, the pinched mouth, the shadows under his eyes. The glassy, uncertain, fragile look as he once again darts those eyes away from Bruce, making himself small on Bruce’s bed. He rolls the single word around on his tongue, and the cold shock of it makes him forget to be mad for a moment as he tastes it on his mouth before he lets it slip out. 

“Boyfriends,” he echoes.

Napier’s shoulders slump even more. He starts to drag his nails down his left arm again. His leg is twitching.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Boyfriends.”

“With you.”

“Well.” Now Napier looks about as miserable as a kid who got his lunch money stolen. “Last night, we said… that whole bit about being exclusive. I don’t know if you remember. It was a whole thing that we talked about. Right before you kissed me?” His eyes lift, hesitantly, doing the metaphorical equivalent of dipping a toe in to see if the water’s warm, and when they do Bruce can see Napier’s mouth tilting up into a hopeful curve. “I don’t know about you but to me being exclusive and being boyfriends sounds a bit like a tomato, tomahto type a’ deal.”

Oh God. Oh God, no. Bruce just doesn’t have the strength to deal with this right now. For fuck’s sake, he hasn’t even had his coffee. He got two hours of sleep, tops. And already he’s managed to be woken up to some of the worst news he has ever received in his life, throw up, endure being forced out of the closet to the entire goddamn world, learn that Barbara read his dirty sexts and discover that people on the Internet write porn stories about him, because that is apparently a thing that people on the Internet do. 

And now…

And now, because he hasn’t had quite enough shit thrown in his face this morning, Napier is looking him with eyes all glassy and bright and green like he wants — like he actually expects — 

Bruce sags into the armchair, wishing it would just let him sink and sink and sink until it swallows him whole. He rubs his face. He looks to the window and stares at the street below.

He tells Napier, “We’re not boyfriends.”

“Okay, sure, we’re not boyfriends _now_. Not with all of your attachment issues getting in the way.”

“My attachment —” Bruce sputters. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Uh, hello?” Napier sweeps an arm around the room. “First time in your bedroom? You never staying the night? Running for the hills whenever I try to so much as kiss you goodnight? You never being able to properly date anyone for longer than a month or two if you’re not doing the fuck and run? That ringing any bells, honey?”

“For God’s sake, Napier, I don’t — I don’t have attachment issues.”

“Fine then.” Napier grins. “Prove it. Let’s be boyfriends.”

“Jesus Christ.” Bruce tries to swallow the bile surging up his throat. “Just — Tell me this, Napier. Tell me this one thing. What about _any_ of our interactions have _ever_ made you think we’d be good boyfriends material?”

Napier looks at him like Bruce has just asked him to explain why two plus two equals four. Or where do babies come from. He tilts his head. 

“The sex,” he says.

Bruce closes his eyes. “Other than the sex.”

“The sex is pretty great though, you gotta admit.”

“ _Other_ than sex, Napier. Go on. I’ll wait.”

“Well, we already fight like a couple too,” Napier points out. “We’re doing it right now! So that’s what, two out of three? That ain’t a bad start at all, baby. Plenty of couples start off with less. And that means we’ve already seen the worst of each other and we know how to handle it, so how much worse could it get? Logically, the only way now is up.”

Bruce stares at him. “So you think,” he says slowly, “that we’d be good boyfriends because we have sex and fight?”

“I mean, what else is there, really?” Napier asks with a shrug. 

“What else — shit, Napier, did you seriously just ask me that, because I don’t even know where to _begin_ with you —” 

“Sure, there’s all the mushy stuff like holding hands and sitting in parks and eating ice-cream off each other’s plates and yadda yadda. That’s why I said two outta three.” He smiles. “I could do some mushy stuff with you, Brucie. I’m good at mushy stuff. Just ask Harley. I could take you dancing, baby. We could dance the night away together and then I’d take you to the riverside and we could sit there and watch the city at night and drink cheap wine straight out the bottle and talk about the most random shit. It’d be great. You’d love it.”

Bruce narrows his eyes at him. “I seriously doubt that.”

“Oh come on.” Napier tosses a pillow at his face. “You know you would if you just gave yourself the chance. Live a little, man. We can work on the third thing. You know we can.”

Bruce lets the pillow bounce off his face and flop to the floor. He’s staring hard at Napier while his heart is doing some very uncomfortable things, undecided if it wants to shrink or blow his ribcage apart and settling on racing a mile a minute instead. He swallows as his skin gets clammy with sweat, and clenches his jaw, and decides, no. He’s not letting himself get drawn into this. Not now. 

“How did we end up here,” he growls. “How the hell are we even having this conversation? We have a crisis on our hands in case you haven’t noticed!”

“Yeah, that video of you sticking your tongue down to my tonsils. I remember. I’m just saying, maybe… maybe that little perv that uploaded it gave us the opportunity to air some things out. Maybe it’d be a nice push. Just think about it, now that you’re out we could —”

“We could nothing, Napier. Okay? Stop that. Nothing’s gonna change.”

“Man, you’re so full of it.” Napier laughs again, that same ugly, bitter sound. “I can’t believe this.”

“Believe what?” Bruce growls.

“Just how deep does that river run, huh? Your denial, it’s incredible. You could fit a family of Moby Dicks in there. Nothing’s gonna change? Are you for fucking serious? Of course things are gonna change. You still have a chance to make them change into something good. I haven’t said anything yet because I thought —”

“Wait.” Bruce sits tight in the chair. “You haven’t?”

“ _No_ ,” Napier emphasizes. His eyes narrow dangerously. “Not a tweet. I wanted to consult it with you first. What, did you think I would?”

“Well.” Bruce swallows. “Yes.”

Napier holds his eyes for a moment, and then locks his hands at the back of his neck. He shakes his head at Bruce and laughs with a wet, desperate edge to it. “Of course. You think I’m this much of a scumbag, don’t you? Wow. You actually do honest-to-God hate me.”

“Don’t you hate _me_?” Bruce challenges.

“No.” There’s a bitter smirk playing on Napier’s mouth, of the same taste as his laughter. He sighs. “No I don’t, Bruce. Though God knows I’d be much better off if I did.”

Bruce doesn’t know what to do with this confession. With a small, hopeful, honest Napier with a jerky leg and red scratch marks over his arms who’s laughing and swearing his anxiety out like a sailor and looks like he’s one wrong word away from breaking. He doesn’t know what to do with any of it. 

So he does the thing he usually does in situations like this one: he retreats. 

“Well, that just proves it, doesn’t it?” he says quietly. “We’d be terrible boyfriends. Clearly I don’t know anything about you and you don’t know anything about me. There’s nothing to say here, Jack.”

Napier’s impossibly green eyes snap back to him, and hold. For a second or so Napier doesn’t say anything.

And then the smirk collapses into something downright sad. “Figures,” he whispers.

“What?”

“That you’d only call me by my first name when you’re breaking up with me.”

Bruce swallows. Heart pounding viciously, he sits there and lets the moment unravel into frayed, bitter threads.

And doesn’t deny it. 

“You really are a dirty hypocrite,” Napier whispers. His voice tenses into something cold. “I just wish I knew what you’re so goddamn afraid of that you’d just — But you know what? Never mind. I’ll just learn to stop caring. Clearly you have no trouble with that.”

Bruce sighs. “Jack.”

“No, I get it. You got caught with your hands down the pants of someone you consider too dirty to let into your own bedroom, and now you’re tainted with me, and you wanna wash the dirt off. Makes sense. I’d want that too if I were you. Why would you ever be want to be seen with someone like me?”

Oh God. “That’s not —”

“Sure it is. I know this song and dance, Bruce. I’ve starred in it far too many times to count. It always ends like that. I can’t believe I actually thought you’d be any different.”

Bruce’s breath catches in his throat. He struggles, “Different from what?”

“Save it.” Napier gets to his feet, his entire body a study in barely-contained, trembling, glistening tension. “I don’t need this. You wanna break up? Just tell me. I’m not gonna beg. But you have feelings for me, Bruce, you know you do, and maybe it could be something good if you’d just —”

“If I just what,” Bruce snaps back, also rising from the chair, “agreed to be boyfriends? To, what, go dancing with you? Are you kidding me now? We’d never last a day.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Yes I — Just look at us, for God’s sake!”

“Yes! We fight! Couples fight!”

“Not like we do, Napier.”

“We could be different. We could be _good_. You know that, deep down, and it’s got you scared shirtless!” 

“Will you stop projecting onto me! I already said —”

“Yes, you made yourself loud and clear. You’re ashamed of me and you’re breaking up with me. Well guess what, fine! Fine. That’s just peachy. I can’t stand the sight of you right now so it works out perfectly. Go tell the rabble that it was a drunken mistake and go back to pretending to be a good straight little boy who never loved being balls deep in that nasty deviant Jack Napier. God, you’re disgusting.”

“I don’t know how you thought this could ever work out,” Bruce calls after him as Napier pushes past him — hard — and storms out for the door. 

“Neither do I,” Napier snaps over his shoulder. “But don’t worry, cupcake, I’ll get over it. Have fun crawling back in the closet.”

With that, before Bruce can even open his mouth, he wrenches the door open and strides out into the corridor, past the small cluster of Dick, Barbara and Tim — and Harley Quinzel, apparently — who immediately assume the highly suspicious and slightly constipated faces of people trying to project that “who, us? Eavesdropping?” vibe. 

All, that is, except for Harley, who instead shoots Bruce a dirty glare and starts down after Napier, calling for him to wait up. He doesn’t listen but she tries to keep up with him anyway, and Bruce stands there in the doorway following them both with his eyes until they disappear down the staircase.

Then he looks into the faces of his adopted family, and sighs. He holds out a sweaty, trembling hand for the Starbucks cup Tim is nursing, and Tim surrenders it wordlessly, his face tortured.

Bruce tips the cup to his mouth.

The coffee’s gone cold.

He takes a few beats to breathe himself past the sudden, white-hot urge to squeeze the cup in his hand and hurl it at the opposite wall.

And then he says, quietly, “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”


End file.
